The cycle continues.

Russel T Davies is coming back as Doctor Who showrunner!

So, personally, I loved the RTD era for its well-grounded companions and the way the episodes are generally standalone but with some element of continuity that comes together in the season finale. I also love the casual acceptance of LGBT characters in that era, and I wonder if this second go will let him really go ham on that. Plus his spinoffs with Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures really helped flesh out the world.

I have reservations about his handling of race, since while his holistic approach to writing characters can be nice, sometimes he writes characters a little too much in a vacuum and there's some unintentional side effects when the casting is taken into account. For example, Martha and Tosh were both women of colour with unrequited crushes on white men, and the casting for Torchwood episodes "Cyberwoman" and "Sleeper" inadvertently ended up playing into racist stereotypes about black women.

Anyway, very optimistic about his return, albeit with some light reservations. I wonder who he will pick as 13's successor, though I do wish he could write for 13, too. Thoughts?

My memory of RTD is that he had trouble with his finales - at least two of them Deus Ex Machina'd the problem away, in one case with a huge lampshade hung on it by the Master ("Then nothing will happen!"). We were also really, really annoyed by his treatment of Martha, specifically the way she randomly ends up in a relationship with Mickey because they're both black. I don't think they'd even met for more than 30 seconds before he dropped that in.

That said, episodes in his run were I think more consistently good than Moffat - who hit both the highest and lowest points - and Chibnall - whose serieseses have been depressingly mediocre throughout. So, y'know... fine.

I do wonder whether the BBC is doing this because they think the show "needs saving", though. Ratings and viewing figures have trended generally downwards from the start, so some bright spark might have gone "Rusty gave us our highest ratings, let's get him back!"